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Telecommuting: Was Yahoo doing it right?

Mayer stated in a memo that employees must start reporting to the office every day, starting in June. She said to be the best, employees must work side-by-side. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” she wrote. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

Yahoo's leaked edict calling remote workers back to the office lit the Twitterverse on fire -- angering advocates of telecommuting and other programs intended to balance work and home life.

The move comes as a new study from the nonprofit Families and Work Institute shows a tide moving the other way, with more workers now telecommuting, and men much more likely than women to be granted the freedom to work at least partially at home.

The leaked Yahoo memo, written by the company's human resources director, suggested face time could result in better insight and decisions. But researchers in the field say there's a lack of credible study confirming any boost in creative flow from face time.

One telework supporter says chances are, the tech giant just wasn't doing it right. Kate Lister of California-based Global Workplace Analytics says if the company doesn't know what its people are doing, then it hasn't implemented policy properly.

A report says 3.3 million Americans considered home their primary place of work (not including the self-employed or unpaid volunteers).

While telecommuting grew by 3.8 percent from 2011 to 2012, the size of the overall the non-self-employed workforce actually declined 1.5 percent.

An estimated 20 to 30 million Americans work from home at least one day a week.

Over 75 percent of employees who work from home earn over $65,000 per year putting them in the upper 80 percentile of all employees.

A typical telecommuter is 49 years old, college educated, a salaried non-union employee in a management or professional role, earns $58,000 a year, and works for a company with more than 100 employees.

64 million U.S employees hold a job that is compatible at least part time telework (50% of the workforce).

Seventy-nine percent of U.S. workers say they would like to work from home at least part of the time (WorldatWork Telework Trendlines). Eighty percent of federal employees say they want to. In total, 50 million workers both could and want to telework.

Based on current trends, with no growth acceleration, regular telecommuters will total 4.9 million by 2016, a 69 percent increase from the current level.

Among the 15 largest U.S. metro areas, San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos (CA) has the highest concentration of people who consider home their primary place of work (4.2 percent).

Detroit-Warren-Livonia (MI) has the lowest concentration of people who consider home their primary place of work (1.8 percent).

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